Latest Albums Reviews

Sextant was dazzling, make no mistake about it, but with Head Hunters Herbie goes for a change of approach, injecting horse doctors' doses of funk into the mix, scaling back the more abstract space rock-inspired passages radically, and getting a new backing lineup to really bring the sound of the album together. Particular props have to go to Paul Jackson's bass work - a fat, meaty bass sound being absolutely vital to any funk undertaking - as well as the completely off the wall percussion work of Bill Summers, who brings a truckload of different instruments to bear. But more or less every performer has their moment in the spotlight here - Bennie Maupin's flute performances are a particular treat - and of course Herbie's synths and keyboards are a constant presence. It's a bit of an abrupt gear shift after the Mwandishi albums, but it's an undeniably successful one.

A brilliant soul tour de force from Stevie Wonder and a more than able followup to Talking Book. The full-length album version of Living For the City is of course a particular highlight, and far superior to the radio edits which mildly lose the song's overall narrative, whilst He's Misstra Know-It-All is perhaps the prettiest and most gentle satirical savaging of middle class privilege ever recorded. The less famous tracks on the album also are generally of a high standard, with Stevie going so far as to take a little detour into funk territory on the lively Higher Ground. Overall it justifies its status as a Motown classic.

Infamously, Hot Buttered Soul was a rush job put together in the mad scramble to get some new product for Stax in 1969, after the split from Atlantic meant Stax lost the rights to its entire back catalogue and was left with no product. Promised the creative freedom he was denied on his debut album (Presenting...), Isaac Hayes stepped up to the challenge admirably. There's only four songs on here and there's clear attempts to pad out the running time with, for example, Isaac's epic spoken word introduction to By The Time I Get to Phoenix, but somehow the whole shambolic mess ends up working a treat.

Alice Coltrane's musical exploration of mystical concepts from Egyptian mythology might be firmly in the avant-garde camp, but it sounds an awful lot more focused and honed than much of what is usually referred to as free jazz. Alice and her posse of sidemen manage such a dead-on evocation of mood with this one that it's hard to say which parts are structured composition and which parts are free improvisation, since more or less everything the musicians play helps evoke the atmosphere aimed for. The sax-and-flute duo of Henderson and Sanders are a particular treat, especially the way they are arranged in the mix - listen to a stereo version of the album on headphones to get the full effect of their interplay.

Art Blakey's Moanin' is a standard hard bop affair elevated by some fine soloing from Blakey's bandmates. Lee Morgan and Benny Golson are the stars of the show here, with their trumpet and saxophone playing a real highlight of the album, particularly on the opening track Moanin', which truth be told is the album's high point, though Golson's compositional contributions are also worth a mention. Although billed as an Art Blakey-led affair, this is really a group effort by the Jazz Messengers as a whole, and a credible addition to the canon of 1950s hard bop classics. I don't think it quite hits the heights of the best work of Miles Davis or John Coltrane, but it's in the same ballpark.

Latest Forum Topic Posts

Posted more than 2 years ago in Does Zeuhl belong in JMA?I would say that Magma deserve to be on here because of the fusion influence on their first few albums and because of the funk influence that became a very big part of their sound on their late-70s albums such as Attahk, and because you do get fusion motifs cropping up here and there on more or less all their albums.